And it died the moment there was a Republican in the White House because the GoP doesn't actually care about budget balance, outside of a few individual members

And it died the moment there was a Republican in the White House because the GoP doesn't actually care about budget balance, outside of a few individual members, it's just an electoral strategy against Democrats. They have no problem pushing through massive tax cuts with "budget neutral" tricks to get it through with the assumption that they'll simply be extended any ways (and those are just your tax cuts the business tax cuts are, of course, permanent).